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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par